


Mashallah

by coyotedog



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Other, warning: islamaphobia, warning: racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-06
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-23 11:39:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotedog/pseuds/coyotedog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Damian cannot get rid of Damian Al’Ghul no matter how hard he tries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It is so much easier to be white.

When Damian is Damian Wanye, the world is his oyster. He is the son of Bruce Wayne, one of the richest men in the world. He can go anywhere. He can do anything.

But Damian Al’Ghul is like a shadow he can’t kick off. It sticks to him. It follows him everywhere. He can’t get rid of it. Eventually he stops trying.

***

The first time he noticed it, he was in the JLA headquarters with Grayson. Eyes followed him around the room, which wasn’t unusual because he was after all more graceful and better trained than half the clowns there. But then as he walks by, he hears a bit of broken off conversation — little more than a name. “Black Adam.”

***

He’s not a fool. He knows what they think. He will always be a greater threat for reasons they will never explain. It doesn’t matter that his skin is lighter than Grayson’s after a week in chasing criminals in Metropolis. He is marked by his “coffee” skin and his “almond” eyes that no one can see until someone points them out. He will always be on a hidden list of vigilantes who can never be trusted.

For the first time he wonders what whispers followed Mother when she walked into a room.

***

Father takes him to Afganistan to retrieve stolen technology. While they are there, Damian orders a Turkish coffee in perfect Dari and Father looks at him like he has failed a test.

***

When he first meets Cassandra, he tries to fight her. Everyone finds this hilarious, but it is worth it to feel assassin training he has not used in months kick in as he avoids her brutal knuckle jabs.

(Drake is hopeful and polite around Cassandra. Brown is joyful and full of laughter. Grayson is charming and slightly uncomfortable — he is hiding something behind his smiles and hugs and pleas that Cassandra come home.)

Cassandra is standing on the balcony. She turns before Damian can take more than three steps. They stand and look down at Hong Kong below them in silence. The lights are bright and the reflection off the sea is dazzling.

“Ask.”

Damian looks at her. “What?”

“Ask,” she repeats. “Your question.”

For the first time, Damian feels ill at ease with this not-strange stranger. He flinches at his own weakness. Discomfort is for the weak. He is not weak.

“Why did you leave?” he asks, still staring out at the water.

He can see her look at him out of the corner of his eye. “I was tired of being watched.”

Damian wonders what it is like to fade into the background. He has always been watched.

***

They are all waiting for him to show his true colors. He wonders what his true color is. Is it brown like the coffee he ordered? Is it golden like Black Adam’s was in the sunlight when he threw the Americans out of Khandaq? Is it pale like Mother’s — only dark against the ghost white of his father’s skin?

***

A man tries to rob and kill an Algerian family living in the Narrows. He is not doing it because he wants money — what can a family that can barely pay the rent give him that would make breaking into their second floor apartment worth his while?

Batman and Robin stop him because Damian knows what ساعدونا * means.

The three year-old girl refuses to come out of the closet where she has hidden.

“She’s scared,” her seven year-old brother explains. “And —” he glances at them nervously. “She does not like speaking English.”

Grayson looks confused. Damian’s expression does not change, but he wonders what English means to a little girl where someone has written “go home towelheads” in thick paint on the door.

“لا تخافا” he says carefully, tongue stumbling over the unused verb conjugation — he has not spoken Arabic since he was last with Madihah, who taught him how to kill with only one hand and sometimes told him stories of the Prophet when he was bored. “نحن هنا للمساعدة.”**

She comes out after a few minutes of conversation that leaves Grayson looking at him in a way he never has before — thoughtful, and interested. Damian will die before he will admit that he looked for the phrase “Black Adam” on Grayson’s face.

“ما شاء الله”*** her brother says when she tells Damian that she is happy that Robin speaks Arabic. Damian grits his teeth in sudden anger. This is not worth praising God for.

For once, Grayson does not say anything on the way back to the Mansion. Damian is grateful. He does not know what he would say back.

***

Damian does not stop speaking Arabic. The whispers and stares follow him around like a cape.

Let them watch. He will show them.

***

Translations:

*Help.

**Do not be scared. We are here to help.

***Mashallah - “God has willed it,” an expression of joy and a way of warding off jinxes. Equivalent of English “knock on wood.”


	2. Epilogue: Now With Bonus Batman Hugging Action!

Dick actually does know Arabic — like Bruce would ever have let him get away with such a huge gap in his education — but the words are always clumsy and unfamiliar in his mouth.

Somehow Damian says them differently, even though his grammar is rough and he stumbles over the words as he coaxes the tiny girl out of her hiding place. She looks up at Damian with wonder and hope, when she comes out and her brother looks so wary, like he has already learned that the world will always pull the rug out from under him.

Damian looks at him in the same way for a split second and Dick is suddenly ashamed. How much has he missed because he only thinks of Damian as Bruce’s son?

He doesn’t say anything on the drive home, turning the scene over and over in his mind. He feels like he has been slapped awake by Damian’s wince at the boy’s thanks, except it wasn’t exactly thanks, was it — Dick can figure out the literal meaning but the nuances escape him until Oracle, crackly in his ear, talks about births and weddings and occasions of great joy and warding off the evil eye.

He still doesn’t know what to do once they are home but he knows he can’t let Damian leave because they had looked so similar, that boy and his Robin, and sometimes it is so easy to forget that Damian is only three years older than a skinny boy in a shabby apartment trying to protect his sister with a baseball bat almost as big as him.

Dick rests his hands on Damian’s shoulders and pulls him close. “Grayson, what are you doing,” grumbles Damian but his body relaxes against Dick’s. Dick breathes deep and just holds him there, kneeling so that all of Damian’s tiny body is cradled in his arms. Holds him until Damian lowers his forehead onto Dick’s shoulder and curls his hands in Batman’s cape and breathes.

And it isn’t enough, but it’s a start, and Dick won’t forget this time.


End file.
